The Forest Final

This week, Brenda Cooper celebrates a win in the trial of a lifetime.

~ Julian and Fran, September 14, 2025

For September, The Sunday Morning Transport brings you new stories by Cecilia Tan, Brenda Cooper, Jennifer Hudak, and Mari Ness. As always, the first story of the month is free to read.

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The Forest Final

by Brenda Cooper

Sallie Thornton put a hand on Scout’s shoulder, scratching absently, nails sliding across silvered skin. Scout turned its head toward her, eye sockets widening slightly into its curious look. She regarded the sharp jowls, broad head, and flexible black ears. At rest, Scout looked more like a dog than a robot. When it moved, it looked like a hell of a machine. She loved it. Soon, she said.

Now, Scout replied. The rodog turned its head toward an incoming helicopter, just visible in the near-dawn light. As it neared the helipad, electric rotors ruffled Sallie’s hair and the soft collar of her uniform. She swallowed, tensed, and blew out a long breath. If she passed this final test, she would become an official Forest Guardian. If she finished in the top ten, she could pick where she worked. If not, she could end up in one of the ravaged areas, which might take years to work out of. If she didn’t die first. She swallowed again, breathed. Half her success depended on her partner. Partner assignments were anonymous.

She hoped for physical strength and a precise mind to balance her own speed and instinct. When the genetic gift fairy smattered dust on Sallie, she got grace and stamina, no useful height, and no significant physical strength. Scout made up for that, but the humans had to make the decisions in this test.

The rotor wind picked up and the copter landed gently on the gravel pad. Sudden silence amplified her heartbeat. The door slid open. A rodog half Scout’s bulk leapt through the opening and bounded to Scout’s side. An older redheaded woman no bigger than Sallie clung precariously to its back, her spindly legs barely gripping her rodog’s belly. Like Sallie, she wore a cadet uniform, moss on cedar on khaki, advanced combat boots, a helmet with embedded smart glasses, and a tool belt decorated with leather sheaths and holders. Her slender mount’s long neck and thin ear stalks gave it a hint of giraffe. The woman leaned toward Sallie. “I’m Orla.”

She had hoped for a young, strong man. Orla must be at least fifty. Sallie stifled her disappointment. First impressions didn’t really matter, did they? She took the offered hand, calloused and sun-darkened with pale pink palms. “Sallie. Pleased to meet you.”

Behind Orla, the helicopter’s rotors spun up. With a brief startling flash of noise and wind, it rose above them and darted off to the south.

The chime of an incoming order pinged and displayed in her glasses. Scout would have it too.

At or before 0500 on June 7, 2059, you are expected to report to Spokane Forest Guard Base Headquarters. Along the way, you will locate an artifact in the Teanaway Valley. Coordinates will be provided when you reach Cle Elum.

It was early on June 6. Spokane was on the eastern border of Washegon State. They were close to the western border, on a peninsula east of Puget Sound. Over three hundred miles. In twenty-eight hours. Through mixed territory. With at least one stop. She sighed and glanced at Orla. “Do you need a break before we go?”

Orla’s lenses cleared. Wrinkles surrounded intense green eyes. She spoke gently. “Let’s compare orders.”

Oh. “Good idea.”

At or before 0500 on June 7, 2059, you are expected to report to Spokane Base Headquarters. Two ambushes have been planned. You will be graded on how well you avoid these, or if you don’t, how well you prevail.

“Thank you,” Sallie said. She flicked a copy of her own message to Orla.

Orla smiled. “I do need a moment. While I’m preparing, can you evaluate routes?”

As Orla’s rodog knelt for the dismount, Sallie slammed a lid on a slight rush of irritation at Orla for giving her an order. She was the top of her class! But maybe Orla was too. Sallie had never seen her; Orla must be from one of the other two training cadres. She asked her electronic assistant for a map of routes and times. Spokane lay due west, but Puget Sound blocked that direction. They’d need a boat or to go south.

Orla returned from the porta-potty, then stopped a few feet from Scout. “Link comms?”

Sallie nodded, and moments later a bright orange dot flickered in the bottom of her display. The dogs had interpreted the agreement between them as a shared order. Rodogs couldn’t make choices except to directly protect their humans, but they could carry out requests in milliseconds. And they made damn fine recommendations.

“It’s over three hundred miles.” Sallie double-tapped Scout’s shoulder. The moment its front legs lowered, she mounted. She settled into the slight sway on Scout’s back, her feet found the forward pegs, and she checked her helmet, gloves, and her reach to various handholds.

By the time she finished, Orla had remounted. “Time’s going to be tight.”

“Scout can do eighty on a flat. How fast is . . .” Scout provided the name. “Swish?”

“Faster.”

Sallie doubted that. “I recommend the Tacoma Narrows bridge.”

“It’s a single point of failure. Good place for an ambush.”

“There’s only one route that isn’t a single point of failure. And it will take too long. The ferry saves an hour. If we leave now.”

Orla straightened, wrapped a leather holding strap around her wrist. “Too risky.”

“Safe choices will cost a lot of time.”

Orla shook her head. “Let’s go over the routes together?”

Well, that would burn five minutes. Sallie gritted her teeth and sent the routes: ferry, bridge, and a long run south to where the Olympic Peninsula joined the mainland.

Orla frowned. “I really want to go all the way around.”

“Too far.” The tension between them felt like it might build to a bomb, and Sallie let the silence stay heavy. She refused to yield to the wrong answer.

Eventually Orla nodded. Seconds later they started off at a fast dog trot. They left the navy base at Bremerton behind. There was a long ride between here and the bridge. Sallie’s frustration slipped to joy as dawn spilled pink and orange above them.

Swish was, in fact, slightly faster.

This early, they passed two jeeps, a truck, ten bicycles, and three groups of walkers. On this side of the state, most people supported the rewilding. But even here, some people wanted a life that could never happen again. Sallie tensed as they neared a group of men carrying guns. An ambush?

But they faded left and watched, snapping phone pictures as the rodogs loped away.

The dogs flashed over the Tacoma Narrows bridge, feet drumming on the hard surface. Just across, drones filled the sky, each fist sized or bigger. A hundred? Two? They massed together and swarmed the women.

Sallie clutched the handholds on Scout’s shoulders, flattened, and hung on as the rodog swerved and danced. A metallic crunch told her something had hit them, but Scout’s gait stayed steady. When it slowed maybe a quarter mile from the bridge, she pushed up and turned her head. Where’s Orla? she asked Scout.

Behind us still.

Turn.

Scout’s haunches tensed, its back feet dragging, rear claws extended and digging furrows into the road. Then it whirled.

Swish pranced behind a thick swarm of drones as if looking for a nonexistent gap, Orla flat against its withers.

Damn it! The older woman must have hesitated. Go!

Scout gathered and charged the drones, its big head slamming right and left, making a path.

Go! Go! Adrenaline sang in Sallie’s veins, and she gripped harder, swinging her weight with Scout’s, hanging on as the rodog scattered enough drones for Swish to bolt through. Orla almost fell, barely hauling herself up. Twice. They raced, drones whistling and whirring above and behind. After about a mile, the machines fell back, then up and away.

Sallie panted into the shared comms. “Was that one of the ambushes?”

“Maybe.” Orla breathed fast and shallow. “But if those were Guard drones, they’d still be with us.”

“True.” News drones or even a private swarm, maybe. “Highway Eighteen will take us to the Palouse to Cascade gravel rail trail. That might avoid trouble.”

Orla hesitated, but this time only for a moment. Then she smiled and pointed. “We’re losing time.”

The rodogs dodged heavy, buzzing electric cargo trucks and the periodic car or line of bicycles on the cracked but serviceable highway. One truck driver pulled their air horn, the sound startling.

Sallie wondered about Orla. A quick search showed time in the coast guard in Mexican California. Mediocre poetry. No kids. Funny—she was old enough to be Sallie’s mom, and Sallie’s generation was the last large one. People her age had birthed, at most, a smattering of children. Plastics, poisons, and fear had placed childbearing into the realm of the rich and the poor and left much of the middle-class childless. Most of Sallie’s friends were on the dole and deeply distracted. Lost in games and day-trading and endless television. Not for her, that life. She shook her head, glanced around, forced herself to refocus on the road.

What could Orla learn about her? Raised here in Seattle. Poor. Two bouts with addiction—phones and pot—years ago. Her high scores in reading and writing carried her into the corps in spite of her weak body. She still had her brains. The thought cheered her. Maybe all she had to do was keep Orla from falling and make sure they finished.

They had to finish. Hell, they had to finish well.

The rodogs could eat light, kinetic energy, and a bit of battery. Humans couldn’t. Still, they didn’t stop until they reached Deception Crags, the first rest stop on the Cascades to Palouse trail. They stopped beside a broken stone bench. Orla swallowed three fistfuls of energy gels before she said, “Thanks.”

“For?”

“Saving me from that swarm.”

Sallie shrugged. “If you don’t survive, I can’t win.”

“Does winning matter that much?”

“I don’t intend to spend my career in some sweaty, fetid cypress swamp. I need to be able to pick a location here.”

Orla looked around at the bare park, the cracked concrete pathways. The bathroom had been bombed or set on fire or something. Years ago. “Here?”

“Well, Washegon. The northwest somewhere. Look at the cliffs, the shades of green and blue. Listen to the birds. It’s heaven here.”

Orla nodded, sipped some water, ran her fingers through her hair. “I’d like to win too, but passing would be enough.”

“Not for me.”

“Five minutes?”

At least it sounded like a question and not an order.

As they neared the dark mouth of the Snoqualmie Pass Tunnel, Sallie asked for a stop. “We shouldn’t go through the tunnel,” she said. “The dogs will be able to see heat even without light, but it’s a likely place for a trap.”

“Even though a trap here could hurt a civilian hiker?”

“Seen anyone in the last hour?” Sallie asked.

“Good point.” Orla swallowed and looked up at the cliffs. “I’m not sure. Swish can do it, but I could fall.”

Sallie reflected. “We could use the straps to tie you on like cargo.”

Orla’s mouth tightened. “I’ll hold on.”

Sallie stared at the older woman. At least she had grit. “All right. You go in front.”

Up the scree, bouldering, turning. Swish moved like liquid, while Scout lurched from foothold to foothold. The sun felt like fire on her back. “I’d kill for ice water.”

Orla laughed. “Sixteen more hours. Then you can have a cold beer.”

“Long wait. And we arrive at five in the morning. I’ll want coffee.” Scout hesitated, assessing a sharp turn. Sallie mopped the sweat from her neck, admired a tenacious young vine maple grabbing life from a crack between two rocks. “It’s beautiful here. This is what we’re doing this for. This wild place.”

“You can see the burn, right?”

To the north, hill after hill sported bare black sticks that had been trees. Three Forest Guards had died in that fire. “I know it’s there. But in two years there will be saplings we can see from here instead of ash.” She and Scout had helped drones plant hundreds of thousands of tiny mixed-species seedlings a few months ago. Some would wash away, but many would take and grow and build soil.

A boulder blocked the animal trail they were following, and after two attempts to get around it, Swish turned, forcing Scout to back down a thin stretch of trail with a thirty-foot drop to one side. Just when the trail widened enough for Scout to turn around, three humans stepped out of the woods in front of them, directly downhill. Masks. Vests. Regular clothes, not military. Three rifle barrels pointed at Scout’s nose. The man closest to them growled, “Get off.”

“Go back!” she shouted to Orla, and gripped with everything she had. Get ’em! she ordered. Scout jumped over the front man, high enough to clip his gun and knock it down the drop. As soon as Scout landed, it kicked out with its back feet, throwing Sallie against its neck as it knocked a second man off the path. Now get away! she commanded.

Hold on tighter.

She scrunched and set. Go!

Scout scrambled up a pathless cliff, back legs scissoring almost like a frog’s. They slid a step, scrambled, slid, scrambled. Sallie’s grip felt tenuous, and she clung tight, breathing hard. When they hit a small crest, she glanced down.

Orla lay on the ground, Swish split-legged above her. The one remaining attacker pointed a gun at the rodog’s chest. Hadn’t they heard her command to run?

Shit. Shit. Go back! Scout turned down, leaping. Leaping. Sliding. Leaping again and then becoming a rain of metal paws and teeth on the third attacker, a bronco of a ride for Sallie.

Scout stopped so suddenly, Sallie took another bruise to her chest. She gazed around. No one standing. Just the rodogs, and her. The man under Scout’s feet didn’t move. Someone groaned behind her, and down below, a man screamed invective up at them, laced with pain. She grimaced. Let me down.

Scout complied.

Swish sidestepped away from Orla, and Sallie knelt by her. “You okay?”

Orla grimaced, speaking through clenched teeth. “I have to be.”

Sallie ran her hands over Orla’s narrow arms and only slightly thicker thighs. “Did anything crack?”

“I’m okay. Help me up.”

“Just a minute.” Sallie glanced back at the man under Scout, the other one lying on the path a few feet behind her. Neither presented an immediate threat, and Orla needed to rest. Sallie brought her water and helped her sit up. “I don’t think you broke anything major. Maybe a rib, but not much we can do about that out here.”

Orla pushed herself up, then stood on one leg, the other poised above the ground.

Sallie’s hope sank a little. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“No.” Orla pointed at the man Scout had attacked. He lay on his back, gasping, at least one leg broken. “He did.”

“Can you put weight on it?”

“No.” Orla hopped toward Swish. The rodog knelt in front of her, leg extended.

Sallie helped the other woman mount, balancing her as Swish slid back to standing, still smooth as silk. She looked up at Orla’s dusty face. “The dogs called the conflict in. If you can ride, we can keep going.”

Orla grimaced but nodded. “If I can’t ride, I’ll melt.”

“There is that.”

Riding almost straight down meant leaning back and swaying, sun beating on her face and back jolting. Then they were on smooth gravel trail again and moving. The wind of their passage dried Sallie’s sweat. In front of her, Orla swayed in her saddle but stayed on.

It was late afternoon when they reached the outer edges of the Teanaway Valley. They needed a second meal, so Sallie called a break. “We gotta do this fast,” Sallie said. “Two hours, maybe, but I’d like to do it in one.”

Orla held up a hand, her pale face tight with pain. “Let’s stop a minute and plan.”

Orla needed a rest. She’d lost all color except for the forming bruises on her cheeks. Sallie realized she’d stopped resenting her for being old and small. But Sallie wasn’t going to give up on her dreams. “Can you make it to the farm and rest while I search?”

“I can try.” Orla’s voice firmed. “Do you have coordinates?”

In all the effort to dodge drones and men with guns and just stay on Scout down steep cliffs, she had forgotten to check. Scout provided the information and a map. “Ten miles up the valley,” she told Orla, “on a burned-out farm.”

“What are we looking for?”

Sallie shrugged. “I guess that’s part of the test?” She paused. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Orla nodded firmly but didn’t meet Sallie’s eyes. “Let’s go.”

Most of the valley they rode through had been taken out by fire, but not for years. Evening birdsong filled the young forest. Red-tailed hawks lazed overhead, looking for dinner. They passed three working farms, mostly horses, alpacas, and llamas. Tourist ranches, waste of land other than as firebreaks. But pretty. Orla slumped against Swish’s neck.

They had less than a quarter mile to go. Sallie rode up beside her. “Take care. We’re about to pass through a thin stretch of forest. Logical ambush.”

Orla pushed herself to a seated position, lips thin, face white. “I can’t go around. Terrain’s too rough. I’ll go through as bait. You go around.”

No way. “I’ll stay behind you so I can help if something happens.”

The ride in proved uneventful. Right on the coordinates, they found the promised site: two chimneys and a brick wall, half pulled down by blackberries. Sallie glanced at Orla. “You stay on. I’ll look for clues.”

Orla grunted. No argument. Scout let her down and then turned away, watching the forest for threats.

Sallie cut a fern frond and used it to brush at the openings in the fireplaces, checking for unwanted residents. She shoved her gloved hand inside the crumbling holes. Nothing. They’d trampled the scene on the way in, but she slowed and began to look for signs left by others. Twenty minutes yielded no indication of human passage other than her own. But a drone could have dropped whatever they were looking for. She fed Orla two energy gels and some warm water from her canteen.

“Thanks,” Orla said. “Again.”

“Any ideas?” Sallie asked her.

Orla scanned the forest. “Maybe that tallest tree?” A white pine that must have survived the last fire stood higher than the surrounding new growth.

“Maybe. I’ll look.” Sallie glanced at Orla. “Will you be all right?”

Orla’s nod was sharp and not terribly convincing.

“Be right back.” It wasn’t more than a few hundred yards to the tree. As soon as she pushed through the young larch and vine maples, she stroked the rough, mottled bark. This sentinel must have watched the building of the burned-out house, the fire, and more. She didn’t see a note or a strange rock or anything that looked disturbed around the tree’s base. Nothing in the lower branches.

She looked down at the clearing by the chimneys and froze. Both rodogs stood with heads high, ears swiveling, as if they sensed something. Adrenaline rushed through her. A Steller’s jay squawked at them from the top of one of the chimneys. She headed back down, moving a little too fast for silence. The light would be gone soon. They should have left twenty minutes ago. An hour ago.

Of course this would be the last ambush.

A pack of coyotes howled in the distance.

She nearly tripped over a root, and behind it, a small metal box caught the bright orange of the fading sun. Maybe? She picked it up, looked closely. Not rusted. So yes. She tried to open it, busted a fingernail.

The rodogs paced.

Sallie pulled a knife from one of her pouches and slid it under the lid, which popped open. Inside, a second box. This one had a pad on it. Some kind of pressure plate? She carried it over to Orla.

Orla took it and turned it over and over, then put her thumb on the pad. It glowed orange. “You too,” she said. When Sallie’s thumb lay beside Orla’s, the pad turned green and the box hinge sprang open.

A folded piece of paper and a Forest Guard badge lay nestled inside. Sallie folded one of the badges into Orla’s palm before she opened the paper.

congratulations, sallie. you are now one of us.

“But . . . ,” Sallie whispered.

“It’s okay,” Orla said. “You earned it.”

“There’s only one.”

The crackle of brush made both of them whirl around. Two women on rodogs moved into the clearing, wearing full Forest Guard regalia. The taller one spoke first. “If you got this far, on time, in spite of everything, you’ll be okay in the corps.”

The second woman said, “And no, those men weren’t sent by us. They could have killed you both.”

“What about the drones?”

The woman smiled. “Those were ours. We’ve been behind you all the way. Not too close, though. You saved yourselves. Both times.”

Sallie shaded her eyes to look up at the first woman. “I wanted to win.”

The woman glanced at Orla. “Your evaluator might give you good marks.”

It took a moment to dawn on her. “Orla?”

Orla nodded weakly.

The first woman smiled. “I’m Commander Thorne. We will get Orla medical help. Can you and Scout make it to Spokane? We’ll meet you there, at headquarters. When everyone comes in, we can decide who won what.”

It was a long straight run at speed. She could do it. It might even be fun. She shook her head in wonder. She could fulfill her original orders. “I can still make it on time.”

“Yes. If you are lucky, and careful.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The commander held out her hand and took the pin from Sallie. She fastened it to Sallie’s collar and then stepped back. “We’ll do that more formally later, but just in case you need some authority. We’ll have a few drones following you.”

Sallie looked over at Orla, who held out a shaky hand. Sallie took it. A single clean streak in the dust on Orla’s cheek ended in a teardrop. Sallie pulled Orla close and touched her shoulder. “Thank you.”

Orla returned the touch briefly, then sat up. “No. Thanks go to you.”

Sallie climbed up on Scout’s broad back and checked her straps and footpegs. “I’ll see you in Spokane.”

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Thank you for joining our journey this week.

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Brenda Cooper is a technology professional, a futurist, a writer, and an editor. She holds an MFA from Stonecoast and is an Imaginary College Fellow at the Center for Science and the Imagination, CSI, at Arizona State University. Her fiction has won two Endeavour Awards and been short-listed for the Philip K. Dick Award. Brenda’s most recent work includes a collection of stories and poems about strong women and the environment, When Mothers Dream, from Fairwood Press. Brenda lives in Washington State, where she can be found riding bikes and walking dogs.

“The Forest Final,” © Brenda Cooper, 2023.

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